Thursday, Nov. 9, 2006 | 7:05 a.m.
1975 Smoking is prohibited in public elevators, libraries and rooms during public meetings (but separate smoking areas can be provided).
1987 Hotel, motel and restaurant operators can ban smoking.
1989 Smoking is outlawed at child-care facilities licensed for 13 or more children.
1991 Smoking is banned on school buses. Nonsmoking sections are required at restaurants with seating for 50 or more customers, unless the business makes most of its money on gaming or alcohol sales. Gaming establishments are exempted from smoking bans.
1999 Smoking is allowed in grocery stores leased or operated by persons with gaming licenses, if the store is smaller than 10,000 square feet.
2003 School districts can adopt policies about the use, sale, marketing and promotion of smoking that are more strict than state law.
2005 Smoking is banned in video arcades and at child-care facilities with as few as six children.
2006, Nov. 7 The Nevada Clean Indoor Air Act:
Tavern operators, ambushed by the resounding passage of a strict anti-smoking measure, must now make what they say is a lose-lose business choice: Ban smoking or stop serving food.
While more-upscale taverns with elaborate menus may go smoke-free to accommodate diners, a greater number of smaller bars - where meals are incidental to the business - say they will likely stop serving food to comply with the law.
They all are braced to lose money, whatever their decision.
Question 5, passed by 54 percent of voters Tuesday, prohibits smoking inside any place of employment other than on the floor of a casino, or in bars that do not prepare their own food.
The amendment goes into effect 10 days after a procedural review by the Nevada Supreme Court on Nov. 28. Business owners are scrambling to comply, and lobbyists representing gaming and tavern interests backing the less-stringent Question 4 are considering a legal challenge - a tactic that generally has failed in other states.
Public health crusaders including the American Cancer and Lung societies are flush with the pride of an upset victory, having defeated the tavern industry's better-funded Question 4, which received less than half of the vote.
While the gaming areas of casinos were exempted from Question 5, the battle to ban smoking inside casinos and stand-alone bars is "absolutely" on the horizon, said Buffy Martin, government relations director for the American Cancer Society of Nevada. "We have a duty to protect every single worker in this state," Martin said.
Determining the effects of Question 5 is tricky because of the mixed nature of Nevada's taverns.
For many bars that serve food, gambling revenue - most of it generated by smokers, operators say - accounts for more than half of their business revenue.
"Gaming pays the bills. The food is really a courtesy to the gamers," said Roxee Abbott, manager of Henry's bar and restaurant in Henderson.
Adam Corrigan, who operates the upscale Sedona and Kennedy's Tavern restaurants and, with his brother Michael, the Roadrunner tavern chain, anticipates going smoke-free rather giving up food service - even though his revenue will drop.
"We take our food and beverage product seriously," Corrigan said. "We're comfortable competing with other (nonsmoking) restaurants."
Abbott says many smaller taverns like hers will likely stop serving food rather than force gamblers to smoke outside. For Henry's, where more than 90 percent of gamblers smoke, Question 5 could slash the bar's 22-person staff to five people and cut a menu including its popular $3.99 burger-and-fries special.
The alternative - to keep food service but ban smoking - would drive her smoking gamblers to neighborhood casinos, she said.
"For small-business owners, it's a matter of, do you lose most of your business or just part of it?" she said.
Frank Provenzo, who manages a nearby Sinclair gas station and convenience store, says that location's revenue will likely be halved by the new rule as gamblers migrate to nearby casinos.
Smoking is more important to gamblers than the convenience of stepping inside a gas station to gamble, he said.
In a state where the most recent victories by anti-smoking advocates were smoking bans at day-care centers and video arcades, the passage of Question 5 is a dramatic shift in public attitude, even if only about 23 percent of Nevadans smoke.
Smoke-free legislation is a growing trend nationally, and nine states have banned smoking in all indoor public places. Two other states and Washington, D.C., have passed smoke-free legislation that will be effective by 2009. On Tuesday, voters in Ohio and Arizona also passed smoking bans.
"I do think that Nevada will become 100 percent smoke free in the future," said Martin of the American Cancer Society.
